'1-percenters' profit from our problems

Published: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Monday, April 29, 2013 at 3:18 p.m.

You have heard the old expression, “You are one in a million!” You are, aren’t you? You are pretty special. But are you one in the top million? Well, don’t you wish?

There were 151 million W-2 forms issued by employers in 2011. One in a million, the top 151 of them, each earned an average of $60 million.

Not you, you say? OK, maybe you are more like one in a hundred, the top 1 percent, averaging more than a half-million dollars annually. More likely, in the vernacular of Occupy Wall Street, you, like me, are more probably a 99 percenter. “We are the 99 percent” with an average wage or salary of $36,305. “They are the 1 percent” with an average salary of $526,948.

But this income spread vastly understates the actual income spread between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Most of the 1 percent’s annual income comes from their investments. They own, for example, half of the country’s stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

If you think some of the super-wealthy in the top 1 percent are going to fix the problems of this country, think again. Those at the top of the 1 percent own Congress. They own the administration. They are not going to fix our country’s problems. They profit from these problems, most often at your expense.

These are the people who can afford to buy their own congressperson, their own particular piece of legislation, or influence the administration or a regulatory agency to favor them. In the 2012 election cycle, 57 percent of super-Pac money donated by individuals came from just 47 people giving at least $1 million. It would take more than 321,000 average American families donating an equivalent share of their wealth to match that given by the Adleson family of Las Vegas alone.

If you think the major corporations and the super-wealthy who own them, through our elected officials, did not create the problems our country faces today, and if you think they are going to fix the problems our country faces today, I have five books I wish you would read: David Johnston’s “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill),” Lawrence Lessig’s “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It,” Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington made the Rich Richer — and Turned its Back on the Middle Class,” Donald Barlett and James Steele’s “The Betrayal of the American Dream,” and Hedrick Smith’s “Who Stole the American Dream.”

Read any one of them, or read all five. If you do, and you still believe our country’s problems will be fixed by our currently elected officials, you quite deserve the problems faced by our country today. Learn to live with them. Or do something about it.

All of these problems need our attention. Big banks need to be broken up. They need to be made small enough that if, or more probably when, they fail again, they do not drag the country and the world into an economic quagmire. Big money, both corporate and private, has to be taken out of the electoral process. We need to learn to manage debt; bank and hedge fund leverage, public and private debt as well.

Gerrymandering must end. Free trade must give way to fair trade. We need jobs, but as important, we need jobs that pay a living wage. We need a tax overhaul to obtain both fairness and adequacy. We need a 21st century infrastructure in order for the country to prosper.

We need to vastly improve our K-12 education system, particularly in poverty pockets, be they urban or rural. We need to make postsecondary education affordable for everybody. We need a safety net, but we need not incentivize workers to be permanently captured by it. We need not subsidize Corporate America. We need no more pre-emptive wars. We need not the arrogance to police the world.

How is it that tens of thousands of voices shouting, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” so frightened the president that he fully changed his agenda when, today, the vast majority of us cannot even get our elected officials to acknowledge our concerns? We are the 99 percent. We can get the job done. But it will not happen until millions of citizens make their displeasure with our elected officials known loud and clear by protest — peaceful protest in every city, town and unincorporated village in our country.

If you choose not to protest now, when will you? Do you really want to wait until we have an economic crisis bigger than the one we are still trying to recover from?

There are a few of us in Occupy Hendersonville who are on the streets again. You are a part of the 99 percent. You can make a difference. Come join the protest. Only when enough of us do will our elected officials begin to listen.

<p>You have heard the old expression, “You are one in a million!” You are, aren't you? You are pretty special. But are you one in the top million? Well, don't you wish?</p><p>There were 151 million W-2 forms issued by employers in 2011. One in a million, the top 151 of them, each earned an average of $60 million.</p><p>Not you, you say? OK, maybe you are more like one in a hundred, the top 1 percent, averaging more than a half-million dollars annually. More likely, in the vernacular of Occupy Wall Street, you, like me, are more probably a 99 percenter. “We are the 99 percent” with an average wage or salary of $36,305. “They are the 1 percent” with an average salary of $526,948.</p><p>But this income spread vastly understates the actual income spread between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Most of the 1 percent's annual income comes from their investments. They own, for example, half of the country's stocks, bonds and mutual funds.</p><p>If you think some of the super-wealthy in the top 1 percent are going to fix the problems of this country, think again. Those at the top of the 1 percent own Congress. They own the administration. They are not going to fix our country's problems. They profit from these problems, most often at your expense.</p><p>These are the people who can afford to buy their own congressperson, their own particular piece of legislation, or influence the administration or a regulatory agency to favor them. In the 2012 election cycle, 57 percent of super-Pac money donated by individuals came from just 47 people giving at least $1 million. It would take more than 321,000 average American families donating an equivalent share of their wealth to match that given by the Adleson family of Las Vegas alone.</p><p>If you think the major corporations and the super-wealthy who own them, through our elected officials, did not create the problems our country faces today, and if you think they are going to fix the problems our country faces today, I have five books I wish you would read: David Johnston's “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill),” Lawrence Lessig's “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It,” Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington made the Rich Richer — and Turned its Back on the Middle Class,” Donald Barlett and James Steele's “The Betrayal of the American Dream,” and Hedrick Smith's “Who Stole the American Dream.”</p><p>Read any one of them, or read all five. If you do, and you still believe our country's problems will be fixed by our currently elected officials, you quite deserve the problems faced by our country today. Learn to live with them. Or do something about it.</p><p>All of these problems need our attention. Big banks need to be broken up. They need to be made small enough that if, or more probably when, they fail again, they do not drag the country and the world into an economic quagmire. Big money, both corporate and private, has to be taken out of the electoral process. We need to learn to manage debt; bank and hedge fund leverage, public and private debt as well.</p><p>Gerrymandering must end. Free trade must give way to fair trade. We need jobs, but as important, we need jobs that pay a living wage. We need a tax overhaul to obtain both fairness and adequacy. We need a 21st century infrastructure in order for the country to prosper.</p><p>We need to vastly improve our K-12 education system, particularly in poverty pockets, be they urban or rural. We need to make postsecondary education affordable for everybody. We need a safety net, but we need not incentivize workers to be permanently captured by it. We need not subsidize Corporate America. We need no more pre-emptive wars. We need not the arrogance to police the world.</p><p>How is it that tens of thousands of voices shouting, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” so frightened the president that he fully changed his agenda when, today, the vast majority of us cannot even get our elected officials to acknowledge our concerns? We are the 99 percent. We can get the job done. But it will not happen until millions of citizens make their displeasure with our elected officials known loud and clear by protest — peaceful protest in every city, town and unincorporated village in our country.</p><p>If you choose not to protest now, when will you? Do you really want to wait until we have an economic crisis bigger than the one we are still trying to recover from?</p><p>There are a few of us in Occupy Hendersonville who are on the streets again. You are a part of the 99 percent. You can make a difference. Come join the protest. Only when enough of us do will our elected officials begin to listen.</p>